This Tournament Needs Better Security
by Right What Is Wrong
Summary: Hermione realizes that some nonsense will inevitably befall Harry on Halloween 1994 and decides to soften the blow by inviting two more unwilling Champions to the Tournament: Peter Pettigrew and Tom Riddle. [Parody. Crack. Oneshot. Ron, Dumbledore, and Fudge bashing.]


**Author's Note** : Inspired by thoughts of how Hermione, if she'd reached her Deathly Hallows level of Swiss Army Knife utility earlier, might deal with the Triwizard Tournament.

I commit the cardinal sin of reusing Triwizard methods for Harry, but since his participation in the Tournament isn't the point, I find it excusable.

Moderate Ron-bashing, Dumbledore-bashing, and Fudge-bashing. An unfortunate interlude for Rita Skeeter. Hints of H/Hr.

* * *

 _But Dumbledore suddenly stopped speaking, and it was apparent to everybody what had distracted him._

 _The fire in the goblet had just turned red again. Sparks were flying out of it. A long flame shot suddenly into the air, and borne upon it was another piece of parchment._

 _Automatically, it seemed, Dumbledore reached out a long hand and seized the parchment. He held it out and stared at the name written upon it. There was a long pause, during which Dumbledore stared at the slip in his hands, and everyone in the room stared at Dumbledore. And then Dumbledore cleared his throat and read out —_

 _"Harry Potter."_

Then another gout of flame shot into the air, and Dumbledore took the new name in turn.

"Tom-" That was most people in the Hall's first experience of seeing Albus Dumbledore bewildered. "Tom _Riddle?!_ " While he struggled to regain his dignity, the flame erupted again, and he retrieved the new slip with a sort of punch-drunk grace.

"Peter Pettigrew."

* * *

The knowledge of their misadventures being limited to a few, Harry cornered his two friends as soon as he could manage to get them alone, which was a surprisingly long time after that unfortunate ceremony. "All right, you two, which one of you did it? Can't be Sir- er, Snuffles, I haven't told him about Riddle yet."

Ron gawped at him. "I thought it was _you_!"

That left Hermione, who met his eyes with an unashamed look. "I didn't put your name in, Harry, but I knew any ceremony held on Halloween was bound to go wrong for you, especially with all the emphasis on a binding magical contract all year round-"

" _How?_ " Harry cried in frustration. He paused. "Okay, that does seem like a perfect set-up for another disaster, but you couldn't _rationally_ know I'd be doomed to that fate."

"Harry, your life is so strange, it makes me think Divination is valid - if only for you." Hermione shook her head. "If there wasn't such a thing as fate, you wouldn't get caught at the center of all this absurd nonsense _every_ year, even when you're not seeking it out.

"So I Confounded the Goblet - that didn't require me to cross the Age Line - and maneuvered my two slips in with a bit of work with a fishing rod. Of course my Confundus would be too weak to confuse the Goblet of Fire if it was _just_ me, but someone would have to tamper with it _anyway_ if they were going to make it accept your name, and I worked it out so that, if they did that, it would fall for my entries too.

"So Peter Pettigrew is required to show up and prove he's alive and well, and Riddle will be forced to come out of hiding and show himself. I suppose he _could_ try not to attend - especially if he's physically incapable of doing so - but the penalties historically have ranged anywhere from being changed into a Squib to death to permanent and perpetual misfortune, so I daresay he'll manage to compete with that as the alternative. Since he hasn't returned yet, I expect he's in no state to do so, which is all the better."

Harry thought that Voldemort was further along to returning than she thought, but then again, his dream hadn't given him the impression Voldemort was in the best state. So he nodded.

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to get you out of it, Harry," she said to him, "but I wasn't able to work out how to get it to _reject_ a name. I'll do everything in my power to help you-"

"Hey, wait," Ron broke in, sounding irate. "You went to all the trouble to get _them_ in, but not _me_?"

They both looked at him.

"Ron," Hermione said in an uncomprehending voice, "you do realize that I deliberately entered Wormtail and Riddle in the hopes it would turn out to be a deathtrap, and whoever entered Harry was undoubtedly thinking the same thing?"

"What the bloody Hell does that matter?" Ron demanded. "Why did you go to all that trouble for that pair of Dark wizards, but not me? And you really expect me to believe you entered the two of them and _someone else_ just so happened to enter Harry - the one of us you like better? That would be a bloody great coincidence, wouldn't it?!"

After a confusing but heated argument, Ron stormed off. The two of them stared after him, then turned to each other.

Hermione was the first to speak. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," she said to Harry. "Ravenclaw."

After a moment, he understood. "Slytherin."

Silent understanding passed between them as they held eye contact. "I don't understand Gryffindors," Harry said eventually.

"Neither do I."

* * *

The First Task began with some adjustments. Each dragon would be used twice, since there were twice the number of contestants as expected, and each school would technically be represented twice. Harry was claimed by Hogwarts, Karkaroff quickly chose the former Dark Lord, and Beauxbatons was left with Peter Pettigrew. Since Harry described the rat to them as a miserable coward, Madame Maxime was not amused by the "coincidental" assignment.

She had the last laugh, however, because the Dark Lord failed miserably. Showing up as some sort of horrid construct that resembled nothing so much as a flayed baby, he seemed to stand a chance, due to the monstrous snake that hauled him along, until the Welsh Green fried both baby and snake with a single breath. The judges gave the disembodied spirit that floated up from the ashes an unanimous score of **0**. In fairness, he made Tournament history by being the first competitor to have scored a flat zero while still _somehow_ continuing to exist in the world of mortals. He didn't particularly appreciate it, but was in no state to argue.

Harry Potter of Hogwarts put on an unusually effective Invisibility Cloak and retrieved the egg without difficulty. Karkaroff and Maxime tried to accuse him of cheating, since the dragon's sensitive senses of smell and hearing should have detected him nonetheless, but Dumbledore reluctantly vouched for him and gave him full marks. Bagman, of course, agreed, and Crouch did as well after a brief pause. The disgruntled remaining judges gave him two ones, pending a full explanation from Dumbledore.

Peter Pettigrew, once he stopped sobbing as he stumbled into the arena, performed with remarkable skill, gradually Transfiguring the boulders around the arena into a mob of beasts and then sending them at the dragon all at once. With the Swedish Short-Snout distracted by the monstrous horde attacking its nest, a mere rat was far beneath its notice, and he managed to roll the egg away well before it dispatched all his creatures. He received high marks from all judges and fled the arena via Portkey. Little good that it did him, for he had definitively proven his survival already.

A disturbed Minister Fudge decided to reopen the Sirius Black case before the public did it for him. Photographs taken at the Task showed that Pettigrew was missing a little finger, which would match the only body part of his found at the scene, and so an alternative narrative was constructed quickly: Pettigrew had sliced off his finger and killed the Muggles himself, and Sirius Black's madness had been temporary insanity brought on by the horror before him and the knowledge the perpetrator had gotten away. That this matched the testimony an irate Harry Potter volunteered to investigators was... awkward. Apparently that supposed Confundus had been a misdiagnosis.

Up against a wall, Fudge did the same thing politicians had done from time immemorial and blamed his predecessor for everything. Since Bagnold was dead and couldn't defend herself, he freely painted her as an incompetent who just wanted everything resolved as quickly as possible with no care for right and wrong (which was both accurate and easily applied to him as well, not that he was about to advertise that), and swore he'd suspected something was wrong all along and had just played along to lure Pettigrew out of hiding. And it had worked! Somehow! Another victory for the Ministry under its brilliant and august leader, Cornelius Fudge! Now the poor unjustly-persecuted Sirius Black would be vindicated at last, and he would be, of course, grateful to the Minister that had seen the light at last...

In reality, Sirius was choking down his bile only by swearing to himself, as he read sickening Ministry-propaganda-piece article after sickening Ministry-propaganda-piece article, to use his inheritance to bait Fudge into showing his corruption in front of witnesses. But Fudge, of course, didn't know that.

* * *

The Yule Ball went well for almost everyone.

Harry Potter, for his part, managed well enough - he was still on the outs with his former best friend, as his "cheating" had solidified the notion that he'd been the one to enter himself in the minds of many (Ron unfortunately included), but he nonetheless had a pleasant evening with his _other_ best friend. They'd gone with each other only because it was easier than getting up the courage to ask someone else, of course. Naturally. That was the only reason. And if they kept telling everyone else that, perhaps they could believe it too and stop all these awkward, confusing, giddy feelings that threatened to muddle their friendship.

The remains of the Dark Lord, though obligated to attend, spent the entire evening cursing at everyone and swearing bloody revenge upon everyone that laughed at his current state. There were nonetheless quite a few people; a large group abandoned the intended purpose of the Yule Ball in order to spend the entire night chasing him around and shouting abuse at him, mainly those who had lost family members to his rampage. Those who, against all reason, attempted to defend the Dark Lord were trampled. Mad-Eye Moody inexplicably did not participate in the anti-Dark Lord mob, despite having every reason to do so, in favor of getting as drunk as possible as rapidly as possible and then staggering back to his quarters to pass out.

Peter Pettigrew showed up with Rita Skeeter on his arm, smirking from ear to ear, in striking contrast to his date. None could figure out what had driven the savvy reporter to come with a criminal bound for Azkaban as soon as the Tournament ended, but most guessed blackmail, and it must have been quite potent: she appeared miserably obedient to the man in every way, and burst into tears when he attempted to get her alone. Only the intervention of Minerva McGonagall prevented matters from taking a darker turn, with the Transfiguration Professor swearing to a cowering Pettigrew that, Tournament be damned, she would kill him herself and suffer the consequences rather than see him harm a helpless witch. For apparently unrelated reasons, but ones likely related to the blackmail, she was seen backhanding Rita immediately afterwards and shouting at her about how she had perverted her Hogwarts education for the sake of profiting off the misery of others, and how the older witch _hoped_ that, now that she had suffered a bitter taste of her own medicine, she would refrain from such activities forevermore. Skeeter, who looked as though she would swear to anything if it would get her away from Pettigrew, meekly agreed.

Aside from them, though, the Ball was received positively; indeed, many found haranguing the Dark Lord to be cathartic in ways that years of counseling had not achieved. Attendees expressed regrets that attendance was limited to students and staff of the participating schools, with many saying that they wished their parents had been able to enjoy that experience as well.

Most of them were saying it about living parents. Most of them.

* * *

Harry Potter awoke to the Second Task when Pettigrew's elbow hit him in the head.

As he stirred, he noticed a few disturbing things the Egg's poem hadn't described. First of all, he was chained to a bunch of bizarre rubbish. Second of all, he was underwater. Third of all, he found Hermione next to him, and _she_ certainly wasn't a Champion.

What the bloody Hell was going on?!

As Pettigrew finished wriggling free of his own chains and swam for the surface, Harry noticed three more people: an Asian girl he thought was Diggory's girlfriend, a little silver-haired girl who looked like she might be Delacour's sister, and a Slavic-looking old woman. That clarified matters - he had somehow been thrown in with the hostages.

 _How?_

As his mind listed out the hostages and came to the terrible conclusion that his, Diggory's, Delacour's, Krum's, and Pettigrew's captives were accounted for, Harry decided he really didn't want to know and started unchaining Hermione. Some mermen took objection to that, so he cast a Shield Charm around all of them and continued undisturbed. Really, who thought this Task would be much of a challenge when the local hazards didn't even have magic?

All right, throwing him into the middle of the lake _was_ a challenge, but swimming couldn't be that bad, could it? You... kicked and... flailed your arms and... stuff.

He was desperately glad the judges seemed to have placed Water-Breathing Charms on the captives as a safeguard against catastrophic failure. His participation in this Tournament would be a few seconds from its end otherwise.

He got Hermione loose and looked at the other three. The Tournament had done little to inspire him with confidence, and this Task in particular had obviously gone haywire. As such, since he had means, motive, and opportunity, he really ought to save more captives if he could... but Hermione was heavy enough for someone who didn't know how to swim, and his attempts at Levitation Charms weren't working right underwater. None of the other captives woke up when he shook them, either, and they didn't seem to have been provided with their wands besides. He shook his head and began to leave with Hermione, figuring that the Tournament was probably only muddled for the extra Champions, and then hesitated. That little girl was looking awfully pale. And hadn't Hermione told him something once about smaller organisms losing body heat faster? Something about surface-to-volume ratio... and it was very cold in the lake.

He took a deep breath (of surprisingly oxygenated water) and undid the chains around the girl as well, then headed for the surface with the two girls. Maxime could complain all she liked about sabotage and whatnot; this was a stupid Task anyway. He just hoped Diggory and Krum's hostages would be all right.

His arrival turned out to be only salt in the wound, since it turned out Pettigrew had been the real sticking point. Apparently, the magic of the Tournament had thrown up its figurative hands and decided that, since Pettigrew would miss no one more than himself, it might as well make him his own hostage. Even the judges couldn't deny that made a farce of the intended Task, for all that Pettigrew was quite smug about it.

Meanwhile, Voldemort had once again received zeroes across the board, as he could reach the center of the lake easily but had no way to undo the chains, since he hadn't managed to find a willing host between Tasks. It seemed that being the laughingstock of the First Task did very little to encourage his old followers to throw away their cushy lives to assist a glorified ball of gas, and the few insane enough to aid him anyway were stuck in Azkaban.

As for Harry, he was grateful the judges put his presence in the lake to the overstretched Tournament snapping under the strain and didn't look any further. The judges were too busy trying to figure out how to grade Pettigrew, since he technically _had_ finished first and flawlessly, to fuss much about his return of two hostages rather than one.

In the end, they ended up giving everyone but Voldemort middling marks as a placeholder, with Fleur knocked down a bit for having outright failed to reach the middle of the lake (and thus being very relieved when she dragged herself back to shore in defeat and found her little sister already waiting for her) and Pettigrew bumped up a bit for _technically_ being first. Well, most of the judges did, at any rate.

After Voldemort's "hostage" was retrieved - a clumsily-bound conglomeration of a cup, a ring, a locket, and a diadem - Mr. Crouch inexplicably wandered off from the judges' table, failing to respond to the others' calls to return and grade the Champions, in favor of pouring a fresh glass of Firewhiskey for the increasingly alcoholic Mad-Eye Moody. As Mr. Crouch continued mechanically pouring fresh glasses and conjuring ice, as dutiful as any House-Elf, and Moody chanted, "I don't care anymore, I don't care anymore," those present began to suspect something was wrong.

Once Moody sagged into a half-conscious lump and Mr. Crouch obliviously continued pouring Firewhiskey into an overflowing glass, the judges decided to intervene and hauled both of them off for examination. "Moody" was found to be the supposedly-late Crouch Junior beneath a Polyjuice disguise, and Mr. Crouch himself came round from the Imperius after an expert intervention, though his first action after regaining consciousness was to obsessively search for a bottle of Firewhiskey. Perhaps that was for his own benefit more than a post-Imperius urge, however, because his son's testimony raised quite a few questions about the incorruptible Bartemius Crouch.

Meanwhile, Maxime and Karkaroff became very interested indeed in why a bunch of tacky rubbish merited the title of that which Lord Voldemort would "miss the most". Examining it over a protesting Dumbledore, who said he alone ought to examine such dangerous items, they came to the conclusion that these _were_ dangerous items indeed and handled the situation then and there; Karkaroff's spontaneous Fiendfyre barbecue by the shore of the Black Lake would be the talk of Dark Arts aficionados for decades to come. Meanwhile Maxime counted off the hostages in her mind, realized how Harry Potter had ended up beneath the lake, and, being a bit more merciful than Karkaroff, began arranging an emergency appointment between the boy and several of her most trusted and respected contacts via long-range mirror.

The screaming Dark Lord swooped around the judges all the while, having desperately latched onto the excuse that this counted as sabotage of a Champion by the judges. Karkaroff rudely told him that _he_ wasn't being harmed in the slightest; the Tournament had no precedent for a "multiple" situation other than the one he, Igor Karkaroff, was setting right then and there. Any emotional harm he suffered was his own fault for his own actions however many years past - no man cheated the reaper forever, and by attempting to do so, he had brought this fate upon himself.

That was not the last of the controversies that day, alas. It had been a very long time since Albus Dumbledore had been overridden on his own territory in such a serious and blatant manner, with Karkaroff's public announcement of what the artifacts were followed by a Fiendfyre bonfire without even _consulting_ him (or letting him examine that intriguing ring), and Maxime's insistence that the matter of Harry Potter could be handled via the most advanced magical surgery techniques without permanent harm to the boy was the final straw. He broke into a public tirade against their "youthful folly", which shocked the audience, but not so much as what followed; the overwrought old man began sweating profusely on a freezing winter day, turned cherry red, and finally, in front of a horrified crowd, toppled over on the spot.

Thanks to rapid medical intervention, he survived, but the stroke (or "apoplexy", as it was popularly called in the papers) left its mark; with symptoms including partial paralysis, delusions of grandeur, and attacks of severe confusion, he was soon deemed unfit for duty even by Hogwarts's variable standards. A mourning Minerva McGonagall took over his duties as Headmaster and Triwizard judge. His brother Aberforth initially volunteered to take care of him, but, after discovering the stroke had not improved Albus's personality, gave up and sent him to a magical care home.

Severus Snape was heard to opine that the delusions of grandeur and attacks of severe confusion were far from new, but admitted that it was a tragedy he could no longer disguise them in public.

* * *

With all conspirators uncovered, the Third Task ended without incident, with Peter Pettigrew racing to the center of the maze (having a war veteran compete against seventh-years was as unfair as having seventh-years compete against a fourth-year) and claiming the Cup. Voldemort again arrived first but impotently. Those who observed the cloud of black mist before the task noted that it seemed cripplingly despondent anyway, as it had ever since Karkaroff's Fiendfyre had finished burning its possession down to ash.

As Pettigrew walked towards the judges' table and the Aurors walked toward him, he stopped and cleared his throat. "The winner of the Triwizard Tournament has always been granted a boon," he announced to the general audience, "and, for the sake of preventing arguments and abuse of this boon, it was standardized at a thousand Galleons several dozen Tournaments ago." He gave a dry little laugh. "However, I won't need Galleons where I'm going. Since the Tournament is now drawing to a close, our _dear_ government can now haul me in without incurring its wrath, and I figure that, depending on the _clemency_ of my judges, I'm either doomed to a life of rooming with Dementors in Azkaban or an _eternity_ of the same with the Kiss. No getting out of it: I'm guilty as sin and I know it, and even if I managed somehow to weasel out of it, dear Mr. Padfoot and Mr. Moony would hunt me down and make me wish I'd taken the Dementors - assuming our _darling_ Headmistress didn't take a sabbatical to do it herself first. Here, kitty, kitty." He coughed, smiling the fearless smile of the damned, and went on. "So I'd like to ask for a special substitution for my boon, which I think I've earned as the undisputed best competitor in this Tournament: a simple and painless death."

Uproar in the audience, both because of Pettigrew's audacity and a litany of _entirely objective_ Rita Skeeter articles whipping up the always-bloodthirsty Wizarding public to howl for the traitor's blood. The judges, however, debated among themselves, and reluctantly came to the conclusion he was within his rights. Pettigrew nodded somberly, squared his shoulders, and drew his wand, then pressed it to his temple and spoke the incantation for the Killing Curse.

As his body hit the ground with a soft _thump_ , the Aurors sent to capture him instead turned their attentions to his erstwhile master, who would shortly be crammed into an appropriate containment vessel and tossed through the Veil. Thus perished the most terrible Dark wizard England had known in a century.

And thus concluded the first Triwizard Tournament in centuries.

* * *

"...and _then_ you somehow managed to get the goblin bookies to declare that _nobody_ won, because of sour grapes that _you_ didn't win!"

"Ron, I wasn't involved in that at all!" Harry snarled through gritted teeth. Rumor had it that, a few inches from death at the hands of goblin debt-collectors, the insolvent Ludo Bagman had insisted that Harry should _really_ be counted as the victor, as the second-closest to the center, because Pettigrew had committed suicide, and ancient standards of magic held that a suicide could not be honored with victory. The goblins had refused to buy it outright, but been sufficiently amused by his reasoning to allow him to escape with his skin and a refund on his wager. Besides which, it was cheaper to pay out large sums to the few lunatics who had bet on "no winners" than to pay out moderate sums to all of Pettigrew's bettors, so they appreciated his excuse to do just that - after all, if no one but Pettigrew had won and Pettigrew's victory was invalid, then _nobody_ won.

"Bollocks! I..."

Harry rubbed his freshly-healed forehead and wondered if he ought to give up on trying to renew his friendship with Ron. True, he wanted a male friend who could understand the appeal of things like Quidditch and Exploding Snap and the like in ways Hermione just couldn't, but... it seemed like it would be less effort at this rate to get Neville to see the merits of ten-pound cast-iron balls hurtling towards one's skull at high speed while one was hundreds of feet off the ground and wandless than it would be to get Ron to see sense...

Damnit. Hermione was rubbing off on him.

* * *

In the end, Sirius had decided that exposing Fudge's corruption was pointless until further reforms had taken place, and that the Minister ought to be ruined the old-fashioned way.

Fudge had no idea about this as he cowered behind his desk; he just thought the universe was out to get him. It had been such a wonderful night with those half-Veela ladies to whom Mr. Black had _introduced_ him - how had the reporters known to be lying in wait with cameras?!

Worse yet, the photos (the printable ones, at least) were released in a special noontime edition of the Daily Prophet, so he wasn't even warned by reading the morning paper before going off to work. No, he had been caught totally unawares when his wife had confronted him at the Ministry, bursting in on a very important bribery ses- er, that was, meeting. To rub salt in the wound, at that very moment damne- er, _dear_ Dolores had rounded the corner, shrieking for all to hear that she couldn't _believe_ he'd embarrass a devoted, hard-working mistress like her with those _floozies_.

The women had looked at each other, murder in their eyes, and then - just as he thought he'd been reprieved - turned their homicidal gazes on _him_.

Lucius had "politely excused" himself, the damned coward! How could he? _How could he?!_ He'd always thought there was a certain brotherhood between men who had exchanged _that_ many sacks of Galleons, and the bastard _left him to die!_

He shuddered and whimpered as another assault battered his poor, triply-reinforced office door. His political career was finished. He understood that. All he wanted was to have his features permanently Transfigured and flee to live on some tropical island off the proceeds of his excellent policy-making in peace. Was that so much to ask?

As smoke began to curl around the edges of the door, he revised his wish. All he wanted was to have his features permanently Transfigured and hide out in some third-world hellhole that would keep his location secret in exchange for heavy bribes. Was that so much to ask?

By the time the door came down, he had degenerated to rocking in place and murmuring, "Not the whip, Dolores, not the whip, I have such beautiful and sensitive skin..."

* * *

"The Hogwarts Champion is... I beg your pardon? Who in the _world_ is Gred Weasley? Mr. Weasley and Mr. Weasley! Come up here this _instant!_ Do you have any idea what you've _done?_ "

As the Halloween Feast ended without any further controversy and the students departed, Harry Potter gave a great sigh of relief and collapsed face-first onto his folded arms. "I can't believe it," he whispered as Hermione patted him on the back. "It's _finally over_..."

No inexplicable and contrived whim of fate had pained him in sixteen months. All was well.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Considered an epilogue in which McGonagall visits a delirious Dumbledore in the nursing home, but decided it was too somber for the conclusion.

Prophecy shmophecy. Either the Triwizard Tournament was the Power He Knew Not (it led to the the destruction of the Horcruxes, after all) or Hermione was. _Or_ Trelawney was using "he" as the English neutral pronoun, the Grangers had a shotgun marriage two months into pregnancy, and Hermione Jane Granger came squalling into the world at the end of seven months of marriage. Or, or, or. The most fabulous thing about prophecies is that _any_ chain of events leading to their fulfillment becomes, retroactively, the One True Interpretation.

I really need to write a fic in which Harry, having been left lazy and amoral after his upbringing at the Dursleys, cons his way into power by faking being a Seer and taking the gullible Wizarding world to the cleaners. Prophecy is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Bonus if he follows in his mentor Trelawney's footsteps and concludes the fic by unconsciously giving a _real_ prophecy.


End file.
